My grandfather was a dairy farmer, but he also did some work as tax collector and other functions for the county. Every year, he would complain about the time change. It would take him six weeks to gradually convince the cows that the time for milking was an hour earlier each spring, and then another six weeks each fall when they had to wait an extra hour. I guess cows are creatures of habit, and they didn't behave well when their habits were disrupted. I'm assuming it was his other duties that prevented him from just ignoring the time change and milking the cows at the same "real" time all year round.

He hasn't been the only one to complain about the time change. It's a pain. It's a disruption. Try getting a kid up and off to school the week after the time change. I know with perfect certainty that I'm not as productive for a day or two afterward. I have strong anecdotal evidence of behavioral issues with the school goers during the week after the change.

The sleep deficit that the change creates has also been shown to have a small but significant effect on rates of heart attacks and fatal car accidents. In fact, it's been shown that even moderate sleep deprivation is as bad as driving under the influence of alcohol.

All this is true, and sure more death is bad, but what I really want to complain about is how the time change is disrupting my listening to my favorite gardening show. I've been listening to "Down to Earth" on BBC Radio Leicester for years. While the BBC has seen fit to release many of its programs as podcasts, this regional gardening show is, I guess, *too niche" for them to bother. My solution has been to use Audio Hijack Pro (AHP) to record the program each week. The scheduling works flawlessly, or at least it did until a few years ago when Uncle Sam started moving the goal posts.

You see, I schedule AHP to record BBC Radio Leicester at 7am every sunday, which corresponds to the noon broadcast in the UK. That worked fine when the US and London were on consistent time offsets. Now there's a 2-3 week gap every spring and fall where I'm an hour off.

Grrrr. I'm tired, my morning walk to work is in the dark again, and I've missed part three of how to grow blue ribbon leeks. Common people!